


we aren't always given happiness

by arielmagicesi



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, losing their shit over each other in a suit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 08:38:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8571736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arielmagicesi/pseuds/arielmagicesi
Summary: When Maggie Stiefvater posts a deleted scene, you know I'm going to jump on it to expand it. What's that? Ronan was wearing a nice suit and they just so happened to be picking up Parrish for a fundraiser for Gansey's mom? oh what a coincidence... gosh if only Parrish was wearing a nice suit too and they could not restrain themselves





	

Adam could tell that Ronan and Gansey had fought, because it was Gansey who came up to his apartment, instead of Ronan, who normally took any opportunity to burst into Adam’s room and make himself at home for ten minutes when they were supposed to leave.

Also, Gansey was sighing impatiently in a manner that suggested he’d spent the car ride over trying in vain to resolve a conflict.

“Parrish,” he said, sounding exasperated, when Adam opened the door.

“What happened?” Adam asked immediately.

Gansey let out a sigh.

“How do you always know?” he asked.

“Observation skills,” Adam said. He picked up his wallet and stuffed it in the pocket of his suit jacket. It wasn’t a great suit, but it was the only one he owned, and it’d been good enough to go to Mrs. Gansey’s fancy event back over the summer, so it had to be good enough for this fundraiser, too. He’d tried his best to smooth out any wrinkles and knot his tie as neatly as possible.

Gansey put a hand to his forehead.

“He’s being difficult.”

“He’s always being difficult.”

Gansey sighed again.

“It was about Aglionby again,” he said. “He… he keeps saying he’s going to quit.”

Adam stared at him.

“So let him quit,” he said.

“God, Adam, it’s not that simple,” Gansey said, and Adam wondered, not for the first time, what secrets Gansey kept in his head about Ronan. What was the missing puzzle piece that made Gansey think that if only Ronan got his diploma, everything would fall into place?

If it were up to Adam, it would be as simple as telling Ronan to do what he wanted. No- to tell him to do what he needed. He had a bit more faith, after these past few months, in Ronan’s ability to find his own way in the dark.

“I’m not gonna tell you how to deal with him,” Adam said. “But clearly it’s stressing you the hell out to fight with him before this fundraiser. Just don’t bring up anything that’ll provoke him.”

“You don’t have to tell me that twice,” Gansey said, laughing halfheartedly. He straightened his back, and Adam realized how slumped-over he’d been looking- like he had been carrying a burden.

Like his impending death was, somehow, already weighing on him. And he didn’t even know about it.

Adam couldn’t _not_ think about it. But he wanted it to disappear for the evening. He just wanted to go to this goddamn fundraiser, and disappear into the crowd, and pretend like this was his life. Something shiny and meaningless, for a change, instead of rusted-up and full of horrific intent.

“Ready to go?” Gansey asked.

“Sure,” Adam said, grabbing his keys and switching off the light before they headed down the stairs.

In the Camaro, Ronan was waiting in the passenger seat, glaring out at the parking lot. It wasn’t quite dark yet- the event was starting early, and Gansey had to get there even earlier, naturally. So the light was glaring on the front window of the car.

But Adam caught about half a glimpse of Ronan’s perfectly knotted tie. His breath caught in his throat.

_Fuck._

He bit his lip, then unclenched his hands, which had clenched into fists. Ronan was wearing an actual suit, and worse, he was wearing it properly. And he was sitting there, sprawled in the passenger seat like it was a throne, and _holy fuck_ Adam was really not prepared for this.

When Ronan caught his eye, his eyebrows raised, and then he gave a slight, sarcastic grin. Adam rolled his eyes in response.

If nothing else, this night would definitely be a good distraction, he thought.

Ronan adjusted his jacket. A _really_ good distraction.

Adam got into the back, and Gansey got into the driver’s seat. He began nervously rattling off explanations of how the event would go as he drove off. Ronan, it seemed, was giving him the silent treatment, and Adam wasn’t paying attention.

He met Ronan’s eyes in the rearview mirror. They looked at each other for a good while. If they weren’t looking at each other directly, it didn’t count. Gansey didn’t notice. Maybe it wouldn’t be counted, in that imaginary log of _things Adam Parrish did that he wasn’t supposed to do._

It was thrilling.

He didn’t know how he felt.

He knew how he felt.

He thought he knew.

He thought he knew how Ronan felt.

He wanted- something.

He didn’t dwell on feelings.

Ronan’s eyes were intense, and blue, and they glanced away, then back. Adam tilted his head. He didn’t know if he ought to be playing this game, because it _wasn’t_ a game.

It did not feel like a game. It felt incredibly real. What Adam wasn’t sure about was whether he deserved it.

And then Gansey pulled into the parking lot and both Ronan and Adam looked away from the mirror and pretended like they’d been listening to him talk about the party.

 

When Ronan had seen Adam walk out in his suit, he thought he was going to lose his shit. He’d gotten himself used to seeing Adam in his Aglionby uniform and in the casual clothes he wore most of the time and even in those goddamn grease-stained overalls he wore for work. But this was something else. He’d had to take deep breaths before Adam and Gansey got in the car to calm himself down.

Which was stupid. But the other option was passing out. God damn it, why was he fucking like this?

It wasn’t _his_ fault at any rate, it was Parrish’s fault for looking so fucking good in a suit. And then giving him that _look_ for twenty fucking minutes in the rearview mirror, which Ronan certainly wasn’t going to analyze, because he had a full evening of tiny meaningless interactions to analyze ahead of him.

You know. Because he was a fucking… fucking… shitty-ass… dumbass teenage dumbass now.

Gansey was still going on about some bullshit, and Ronan didn’t want to hear it. He’d made up his goddamn mind about quitting school and Gansey was still being an ass about it. So Ronan didn’t feel like listening to his bullshit right now. That was Ronan logic and he was going to carry it out until he was done feeling angry.

Some voice suggested to him that this was immature, and he told that voice to fuck off.

“Hey, Lynch,” Adam said, walking over and taking Ronan out of his thoughts. “Come on, we’re supposed to mingle, apparently.”

His voice dripped with sarcasm at the word _mingle_ , and Ronan smiled despite himself.

“Sure,” Ronan said. “Let’s entertain the masses.”

Adam glanced around at the ballroom Mrs. Gansey had rented out, which was full of mostly tables at this point and only a handful of well-dressed adults, and let out a half-breath of a laugh.

“I can’t imagine he really wanted to let your political views loose on them,” he said.

Ronan’s grin widened.

“Not sure what the popular stance is among Republican bureaucrats is for burning down the system and replacing it with anarchy,” he replied.

“They’d find it charming, probably.”

“They’d find me charming, huh?”

Adam turned pink, briefly, and Ronan’s heart jumped.

“You know, the way rich people always get charmed by horrifying things,” he said. “Like quinoa or whatever the fuck it is Gansey’s always eating.”

He’d pronounced quinoa wrong, and Ronan hated that he knew the correct pronunciation of quinoa (a fault of living with Gansey), but he also didn’t care. He was far more interested in the way _fuck_ sounded coming casually out of Adam’s mouth.

“Guess they’d put me on display,” he replied, finally. “Like a poisonous snake.”

“Genus Lynch, species asshole.”

“Native habitat: who the fuck knows but he’s kept in captivity.”

Adam’s face fell a little and Ronan instantly regretted saying it. Well, he didn’t regret saying it, because it was true. But it was awkward to say it.

“You know,” Adam said, his voice serious, after a moment of silence. “You don’t have to do everything he tells you.”

“I don’t do everything he tells me, believe it or not,” Ronan said, his voice biting.

“I mean- I-” Adam ran a hand through his hair in frustration, and Ronan’s eyes followed the movement instinctively, wanting to bury his fingers in that hair too.

He looked back to Adam’s eyes.

Adam looked genuine. It was not an unfamiliar expression, but it was unusual for him to be like this talking about Ronan.

“I mean that you know what you’re doing,” he said, finally. “You’re not helpless without him, you know. You can figure out your own future.”

Ronan stared at him.

“I’m not like you,” he said. “I’m not a fucking responsible adult.”

“I’m not an adult either,” Adam said.

“You know what I mean.”

“I know,” Adam said. “You don’t have to be like me and you don’t have to be like Gansey, either. You know that, right?”

Ronan didn’t answer. He just looked at Adam, with a strange, warm, liquid affection running through all his veins.

He knew it and he didn’t know it at the same time.

“Adam!” called Helen, from several sets of tables away, and he gave a last, lingering glance to Ronan before walking away.

Oh, yeah. Ronan was definitely screwed.

 

There was nothing quite like seeing Ronan Lynch dressed elegantly in a suit and still looking spectacularly out of place amidst the boring crowd. Adam had thought, once, that he wanted to be like one of those people- never worrying about money, elaborate words and ideas at his disposal, commanding respect. But now he found them utterly boring. He wanted to do something with his life, not just be transported to something else.

He was captivated by Ronan, who he knew felt the same.

The “mingling” Gansey had insisted on was excruciating. Adam was primarily there to illustrate the Ganseys’ tendency to being charitable towards the less fortunate. Gansey hadn’t said that, of course, but he might as well have. With how he told Adam to emphasize that he was a self-made man, a scholarship student, how he’d risen from nothing, and at that point Adam said, “Should I tell them my yearly income, too, just to drive the point in?” and Gansey had said, “No, no, it’s not about- it’s-” and Adam had said, “It’s fine.”

Which was something they needed to talk about. But not tonight.

Gansey, looking drastically uncomfortable in the crowd, slipped out the door, his cell phone emerging from his pocket. Who exactly was he going to call? Jesus.

Adam was restless.

The hum of voices around him was nauseating. An old man nearby said something about Mrs. Gansey giving a speech soon. Helen would have a fit if Gansey were going to miss that, and Adam, quite frankly, having read over Mrs. Gansey’s platform before, thought he would actually vomit if he stuck around for the speech.

He glanced back at Ronan, who was standing next to a decorative vase full of marbles, and slowly pocketing them one by one. Occasionally he would drop one onto the floor and wait to see the nearest partygoer look for the source of the noise so that he could glare at them.

Ronan had noticed Adam staring at him.

Adam was sick of this ballroom. He made a split-second decision.

He jerked his head to the direction of the side door, gave Ronan a meaningful look, and headed out into the hallway.

There was something illicit about slipping out of a party together, and Adam knew it, but he also knew that they were on a precipice. He could easily pull back and say they were just escaping the boredom.

The hallway was mostly empty. A few people were out there. Gansey wasn’t- he must have gone even further, out into the parking lot, to talk to whoever he was talking to on the phone.

Ronan emerged from the ballroom, hands threaded in the pockets of his suit jacket, striding with something between confidence and arrogance. Adam wasn’t a hundred percent sure it had been a wise idea to get him alone.

He felt like he might do something he’d regret.

“I heard there were going to be speeches,” Adam said, when Ronan walked over to him. “Thought you’d want to escape embarrassing yourself by falling asleep out of boredom.”

Ronan eyed him. Adam was struck by the fact that Ronan was a bit taller than him.

“It’s for everyone else’s safety, not mine,” Ronan said. “I don’t know how these assholes would’ve reacted if I’d started throwing projectiles.”

“A projectile is by definition something thrown,” Adam said. “That’s redundant.”

Ronan’s eyes darkened.

“Fuck you, nerd,” he said.

They looked at each other, and Adam said finally, “I wonder if there’s any rooms we can hide in. In case Gansey comes after us to make us go back in.”

Ronan knew as well as Adam did that Gansey was too preoccupied to come after them. Adam knew damn well that he wanted to be as alone with Ronan as possible.

His brain wasn’t functioning right, not with Ronan in that goddamn suit, and with the atmosphere clouding his head. They’d been lost in a sea of grey hair and now they’d escaped to the cool air of the hallway.

“These shitty buildings never have anywhere good to hide,” Ronan said. “I’ve tried to hide during these things before and some old person always barges in to tell you you’re not supposed to be there.”

“What about that room where they kept all the tables?” Adam asked, genuinely curious about the building’s layout now.

“The what?”

“You know, when they were still setting up the last of the tables, when we came in. They brought them from a room down the hall.”

“Parrish, do you think I was fucking paying attention to that?”

“I’m gonna go check it out,” Adam said. “If you want to join me?”

His eyes darted up to Ronan’s, and he could see Ronan sucking in a breath.

“Better than staying here,” he said, and followed Adam down the hall.

The hall got a bit darker, and Adam just let himself not think. This was going somewhere or another and his mind did not have thoughts so much as it had _dark blue eyes_ and _arms in a neat-pressed jacket_ and _sharp jawbones_ directing every one of his actions.

He found the door that he thought led to the storage room, but instead it opened on a courtyard. It was an oddly beautiful courtyard, too- a gurgling fountain, smooth stone floor, chrysanthemums blossoming, the last of the sunset oozing out over it. Gentle music was playing and Christmas lights were strung on the bushes.

Adam glanced back at Ronan, who had a strange, almost nostalgic look on his face.

“Well, this is a nice place to escape,” Adam said.

“Yeah,” Ronan said.

The door closed behind them. Adam wasn’t sure if they were locked out now and he didn’t particularly care.

There was nowhere to sit in the courtyard, so they just milled around, circling the fountain, talking shit about their annoying classmates. They pointedly avoided the topic of Glendower, or Cabeswater, or magic at all. It was an unspoken agreement- if they were going to escape, they were going to actually escape.

Ronan pulled one of the marbles from the glass jar out of his pocket and threw it into the fountain. It made a satisfying splash. Adam let out a careless laugh. Ronan’s face split into an open smile.

“Here,” he said, reaching into his pocket again and handing Adam a marble. His hand lingered on Adam’s for a second too long, and Adam, without thinking, grasped it.

The cool glass marble was caught between their overly warm hands. They both stared down at the joined hands between them, as if they’d acted of their own free will.

Adam looked up. Ronan looked up.

Ronan looked terrified.

Adam’s heart was thundering.

He was fixated on Ronan’s lips. God, he wanted this so fucking badly. He had wanted this all evening. He had wanted this for a while now.

He _knew_ how Ronan felt.

He wasn’t thinking.

“Adam?” Ronan said, voice deep and shaky.

“Fuck it,” Adam muttered, and surged forward, the clasp of their hands breaking. The marble clattered on the courtyard floor. He took Ronan’s face in his hands and didn’t stop to think before he kissed him.

There was a moment of stillness, and then they were kissing furiously, hungrily, obsessively. Ronan’s hands wrapped around Adam, one burying itself in Adam’s hair, one curling around his waist. Their mouths were a mess, desperate in their attempts to devour each other, and it wasn’t clear and it felt like a relief anyway because they were touching, god they were touching everywhere and Adam had not had it in himself to resist this any longer.

Ronan broke off after some length of time, Adam wasn’t sure how long, and tilted his head back, breathing heavily.

Adam was breathing fairly heavily too. His hands slid down to rest on Ronan’s chest, which was rapidly rising and falling.

“Fuck,” Ronan breathed. His eyes were still closed. He looked unraveled and Adam wanted to unravel him even more. Jesus. He was losing his mind.

They’d opened up the box of things they weren’t even supposed to talk about.

Finally, Ronan’s eyes opened. He looked down at Adam the way Adam suspected he was looking back up at him- with an absolute terror at the fact that everything had changed.

“Was that OK?” Adam said, quietly.

“Christ,” Ronan said, almost laughing. “I- yeah. Yeah, it was fucking OK.”

His face was burning red. Adam was sure his own face was red too.

“Better than listening to Mrs. Gansey’s speech, at least,” he said, in an attempt to break the tension, and Ronan laughed awkwardly, his face turning even redder.

Adam knew for a fact that he wanted this. More than anything, he wanted this.

Was it OK for him to want this?

_This isn’t a game. This isn’t a game. Don’t play with his heart._

“I-” Adam said carefully, and Ronan’s face fell a little.

“What?” he asked. Not fully defensive. Not yet venomous.

As though he trusted Adam with his heart. Adam wasn’t sure if that was wise on Ronan’s part.

“You… trust me?” Adam said, feeling like an idiot as soon as he’d said it.

Ronan’s eyes softened, and he took Adam’s hand in his again. He lifted it to his mouth and kissed it.

The hardness left in Adam’s chest melted away.

“God,” Adam breathed.

“You can do whatever you want,” Ronan said. “I just…” His eyes closed, and it looked like he was struggling. “I just want you to be happy.”

Then his eyebrows narrowed again and he said, “Or whatever the fuck, I don’t fucking know.”

Adam thought of something Persephone had said to him, over the summer, before-

She’d told him, “Happiness is not always given to us. But when it is, you’re allowed to take it.”

Persephone had been right about a lot of things.

Ronan was still looking down at Adam nervously. Their hands were still entwined.

Adam smiled up at him.

“OK,” he said. “In that case, can I kiss you again?”

Ronan took a sharp inhale.

“Yeah,” he breathed.

So Adam kissed him.

**Author's Note:**

> I was gonna neglect my homework anyway but I neglected homework AND sleep to write this, so leave a comment. I'm also found at arielmagicesi on Tumblr and @ArielKalati on Twitter


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